Grunts (17 page)

“You’re not as big as a Man.” The orc peered down. “You’re not as big as a dwarf. You’re not as big as a
halfling
, even.”

Narrowed blue eyes fixed on the orc from a point some two feet and seven inches above ground-level. The barbarian snarled, inflating his chest. His helmet, with its attached horns that jutted out a good armspan to either side, slipped down over his nose. He shoved it to the back of his head.

“What
did you say?”

The orc guffawed. “You’re pretty short for a barbarian, ain’ tcha?”

The northern barbarian clapped his hands. The war-elephant lowered its trunk from the makeshift howdah on its back and set a small pair of wooden steps in front of its master. Lord Blond Wolf spat on his hands, unfolded the ladder, and set it up in front of the large orc. He drew his axe, plodded up the steps, and swung his weapon.

The blade clanged into the side of the orc’s helmet. The orc, catapulted backwards, knocked three of its nest-brothers into the heather.

“I’m riding to
succour
Evil, damn it, after our defeat!” The northern barbarian climbed back down his ladder, waving his axe. “Will
that
teach you not to insult a warrior, you rat’s arseholes?”

The orc looked up hesitantly, rubbing its skull. “Where are you riding to, master?”

The northern barbarian threw back his head, tendons cording his throat, and laughed richly. With the orc on its hands and knees, he looked it squarely in the eye. “What damn business is it of yours anyway, wartface?”

The orcs glanced at each other, rapid consultations going on in lowered voices. Scuffles broke out. The armoured and mailed orcs looked up at the war-elephant, and the trackless foothills of the mountains.

“Noble Lord Blond Wolf.” The orc banged its forehead experimentally on the earth, watching the barbarian from one upturned eye. “We’ll form your Dark honour guard, if you let us ride with you.”

The besieging Army of Light set up just in time for the first snow.

Immense and aloof, the monumental rockfaces of the mountains that loomed above the pass silted up with whiteness. Snow blurred the lines of tents on the slopes below Nin-Edin, outside firing range. Snow shrouded the earth siegeworks. Blue and silver banners shone through the falling flakes.

Major Barashkukor, Commander (Part-Time, Acting, Unpaid) of Nin-Edin, stared down from the parapet of the outer walls.

“I don’t like it, Sergeant. It’s too quiet.”

FOOM!

Barashkukor fingered his hairless peaked ear, a pained expression on his features.
“Cease fire!
Sergeant, what
is
that?”

Sergeant Varimnak chewed gum noisily. A hulking, trim, and broad-shouldered brown orc, she wore her black combat fatigues ripped, with engineer boots, and a spiked black leather belt in place of her webbing. Her cropped crest had been spiked and bleached white.

The Badgurlz sergeant narrowed her eyes, removed the gum, and stuck it under one of the crenellations. “Looks like they want to parley with us. Fuck knows why.”

Barashkukor waited, vainly. He drew a deep breath, filling his thin chest to capacity. “That’s ‘fuck knows why,
sir,’
Sergeant!”

“Yes sir, Major, sir!” The stocky orc grinned.

Varimnak’s squad, composed of the smaller female orcs, seemed almost lost in their large ripped marine-issue black combat fatigues. They leaned into the cover of the crenellations, two of them carrying shoulder-fired grenade-launchers; three, M60 machineguns; and one a shoulder-fired
surface-to-air missile. Barashkukor surveyed the Badgurlz’s spiked crests, scars, and tattoos, and his chest swelled with pride.

He sprang up to stand in one of the icy stone gaps in the crenellations, ignoring the thirty-foot drop in front of his combat boots. “Yo, down there!”

The approaching party halted.

A knight in full plate harness bent his head and removed his helm. His destrier stamped. In his armoured right hand he carried a white standard of truce. “Orcs of the Horde! I am Amarynth, Commander of the Light, Mage and Warrior both. Listen to my words of wisdom!”

Sergeant Varimnak looked up from where she squatted, bandy legs bent, cradling an AK47.

“Exactly who is that asshole, sir?”

“Some damn hero or other.”

Barashkukor straightened the peak of his green forage cap and settled his web-belt more comfortably around his thin waist.

“You down there! Unauthorized personnel! I give you statutory warning that you are adopting a hostile posture by surrounding Marine Base Nin-Edin, home of the 483rd Airborne, and by the rules of war I am therefore justified in—”

Barashkukor stopped in bewilderment as the elvish knight dismounted from his steed and knelt in the snow outside Nin-Edin’s walls.

“Lady of Light!” the elf prayed loudly. “Hear my vow! Be with me today, as I battle in the name of Good. Grant me the power to speedily end this battle, so that they shall sing of us throughout the generations, and our glory shall be the greater…”

The dark-skinned elven warrior pushed his black hair back behind his pointed ears, frowning.

“…ah, yes. And so that fewer of the Light’s warriors perish. Grant me the strength of steel and magic both, so that I may wipe these orcs, blood and bone, from the earth! Hack their foul heads from their deformed bodies, tear out their intestines! Gouge out their eyes! Rip the fangs from their jaws and the skin from their faces!”

Panting, the elf smoothed down his blue and silver livery, which had two crescent moons woven into it. His fluted plate-armour shone cream-coloured under the snow-leaking sky.

“Carve the blood eagle on their wretched carcasses,” he concluded, standing up, “and put to the fire their still-living remains! In the name of your Mercy, Lady, amen!”

The orcs looked at each other.

“Well, sir,” Varimnak said, “I guess he was the most diplomatic one they could find to talk to us.”

“Orcs of Nin-Edin! Surrender now and we
may
spare your miserable lives.” The elvish knight remounted and reined in his rearing unicorn. Flakes of snow frosted his pointed ears and high cheekbones. “Throw down your weapons now! You filth will die, like your master the nameless necromancer, unless you make honest reparation for your crimes. There is much work to be done, rebuilding the world after the Dark Lord’s defeat, and it is meet that you should labour in it.”

“Go into slavery, you mean!” Barashkukor turned to speak to Varimnak and found his sergeant missing. He showed small fangs in a scowl.

“‘s pure ungratefulness, sir,” a Badgurlz MFC complained. “After we won the Fields of Destruction for them by fucking off…”

The Badgurlz marine surreptitiously sighted her shoulder-fired missile-launcher.

“No!” the major snarled. “Not yet.
Bad
orc!”

Ignoring the indignant Light party, Barashkukor climbed down from the crenellation and strode across the parapet. Sergeant Varimnak trotted back up the steps from the bailey.

“Dumb Light fuckers won’t attack under a parley flag,” she grunted. “But, like I guessed, there was someone hanging around to take advantage. Major, I got something you
got
to see.”

The Light’s increasingly impatient shouts faded as Barashkukor followed the bleach-haired orc sergeant up across the bailey and the hill, into the inner compound. A thin snow skittered and rolled in waves, powdery as sand, and stung his eyes. The rebuilt parapets and squat towers of Nin-Edin bristled with wires, spikes, and dishes.

“Remind me to have a word with Corporal Ugarit, Sergeant, about that new equipment he keeps mounting—
How the fuck did
that
get in here?”

“This prisoner, sir? Sneaked in while you were at the main gate.” Varimnak showed orc-fangs smugly. “I’m gonna have those rear-guard squads drilling till they drop.”

A squad of orc marines stood around something, brandishing AK47s and SA80s. Barashkukor marched up, shouldered through, and came to an abrupt halt.

Seated cross-legged on the frost-hardened earth, with her bare hands resting palm-up on her knees, a female elf looked up at him and smiled.

“Another elf!” Barashkukor anguished. “Have the marines responsible shot!”

“Sure thing, Major, sir.”

Barashkukor strolled closer and snapped, “On your feet!”

He then gazed up at the six-foot-tall female elf with some misgivings.

Her glossy brown hair was braided from jaw level down, woven with strips of red cloth and tied around her brow with a red headband. It showed both her pointed elvish ears and the deep scar that crossed her cheek from outer eye to jaw. She wore a laced brown leather bodice and thonged leather trousers, and high boots, sorcerously oblivious to the cold. Dark lashes shaded her golden eyes.

There were the scabbards of daggers at her belt, boots, and back—but no weapons.

“She’s obviously a spy for the Light, Sergeant. Why haven’t you executed her?”

The slender young elf put one hand up to her bodice and pointed at a silver badge. The insignia was easily recognisable.

“Press,” she said briskly. “My name is Perdita del Verro. I’m a war correspondent—from
Warrior of Fortune
broadsheet. You’ve heard of
Warrior of Fortune.”

“Warrior of Fortune!”
Barashkukor breathed. “Wow! That is, I—well, I read it for the advertisements, of course. Military supplies. Very useful. You’re—did you say you
write
for them?”

“Chief news reporter.” Perdita del Verro smiled down at him. She produced a small notebook and a pencil. “Things have been slow since the Last Battle. I really couldn’t miss the chance to come along with Amarynth and interview your boys. No, don’t bother with the weapons—I have the usual magical press immunity. So, Commander…‘Barashkukor,’ is it? How do you spell that?”

“Assschuu!”

Perdita del Verro smiled dazzlingly down at the orc, warmth infusing her golden eyes.

Thoughts of the siege parley completely slipped his mind. Major Barashkukor wiped his nose and began, starry-eyed, to look around the compound of the Nin-Edin fort for something of sufficient interest to impress the elven journalist.

Far from Sarderis and Herethlion and the sea, north beyond the wilderness that interpenetrates the Demonfest mountain range, lies the Four-Gated City. The city has many more gates than four—they number in the hundreds, if not in the thousands—but of the original gates there are only four remaining: Tourmaline, Chrysoberyl, Lapis Lazuli, and Onyx. The first three are often used, the last never.

Ashnak’s commandos sensibly chose to make their entrance through the Tourmaline Gate. To remove locks and bars, terminate guards, avoid the Sunset Alarms, and booby-trap the watch-house was no greater task than running the Wilderness for six days and practising marine survival techniques at the unfriendly end of the Demonfest Mountains.

Twenty-four hours’ surveillance from the attic of a deserted mansion left Ashnak chewing his talons. Past sundown, he lifted the night-vision sights of his M16 to his eyes, watching the last frock-coated and bewigged Men leave the grounds of the Visible College.

“Not so much as a dwarf down there,” he muttered to Razitshakra. “Not a halfling, not an elf—certainly none of us. No race but Men. That leaves us with forcible entry.”

Ashnak surveyed the high walls of the Visible College in the curious green illumination of night-sights. He lowered the gun, his own sight being somewhat better. The fifty-foot outer wall gave way inside to parklike spaces with convolutedly trimmed hedges and to buildings with domes, cupolas, columned porticos, and very un-Classical slit windows.

“Okay, marines. We’re going in…”

Camouflaged, doing a slow leopard-crawl, it took them an hour to cross unobserved the empty space between the last mansions and the wall of the Visible College. Evening’s noise faded. Ashnak flexed his broad hands in the cover of the wall, craning his neck to look upward.

The moon rose from the rooftops, gibbous, in its last quarter. Its faint illumination showed him Razitshakra and the other marines crouched against the wall. Ashnak moved silently over to Lugashaldim, looking up at the masonry.

“Corporal, give me a hand.”

“Can’t, sir.”

“What?”

“It fell off, sir.” The Undead orc marine shuffled, embarrassed. In his large, horny right hand he held his left hand. “I’ll fix it, sir, it won’t take a minute.”

Stuffing the hand in one of his combats pockets, Lugashaldim detached his sewing-kit from his web-belt one-handed and looked a little helplessly at the thread and needles. One of the other Undead grunts grumbled something, threaded the needle in the faint moonlight, and set about sewing the offending limb back on.

“If
you pussies have quite finished!” Ashnak hissed. “Are we an elite commando squad or are we a fucking sewing circle?”

There were mutters of “Sorry, sir,” and the Undead orc marines returned their attention to the Visible College.

“Bound to be guarded with magic,” one SUS marine whispered to his companion.

The other orc shivered. “Nobody said nothing about
magic.
That’s the marine corps for you. We get sent on these missions; nobody knows if they’re safe; could have
wizards
here for all we know; and do we get
asked
if we—”